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American statesman John C. Calhoun was one of the most prominent advocates of the "slavery as a positive good" viewpoint.. Slavery as a positive good in the United States was the prevailing view of Southern politicians and intellectuals just before the American Civil War, as opposed to seeing it as a crime against humanity or a necessary evil.
American slavery as "a necessary evil" In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". At that time, it was feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery.
Calhoun was firmly convinced that slavery was the key to the success of the American dream. [131] Whereas other Southern politicians had excused slavery as a "necessary evil", in a famous speech on the Senate floor on February 6, 1837, Calhoun asserted that slavery was a "positive good". [4]
Rep. Tom Cotton cited the Founding Fathers as calling slavery a "necessary evil," but it's unclear to what exactly he was referring.
The concept of "necessary evil" is an idea that must be thoroughly rejected. Evil is not necessary, and to accept it as such is to perpetuate it. Evil must be opposed, rejected, and avoided at all costs. It should never be viewed as something that we must unavoidably and inevitably participate in. We trivialize evil when we refer to it as ...
Harper is likely best remembered as an early and important representative of pro-slavery thought. His Memoir on Slavery, first given as a lecture in 1838, and reprinted in the Southern Literary Journal, classed Harper as a leading proponent of the notion that slavery was not merely a necessary evil, but as a positive social good.
John Tyler, the tenth President of the United States, owned slaves throughout his lifetime and held complex views on slavery. He saw it as a necessary evil. Many of his policies as president reflected pro-slavery ideals with efforts to protect Southern interests and resist abolitionist influences, both domestically and internationally.
The magazine emphasized the South's economic inequality, relating it to the concentration of manufacturing, shipping, banking and international trade in the North. Searching for Biblical passages endorsing slavery and forming economic, sociological, historical and scientific arguments, slavery went from being a "necessary evil" to a "positive ...